Posts

Well, I know I posted a map just about two weeks ago that shows the gender of U.S. governors and Canadian premiers, and within those two weeks nothing has changed. However, I haven't posted a map on this blog yet that is truly North American - which is to say, a map including Mexico. (I know Central America and the Caribbean are also part of North America, according to the standard categories, but Mexico rounds out the countries that only belong to North America.) So, even though not too much is different, here is my first homemade map ever that has the entire NAFTA bloc - Canada, the United States and Mexico. Take a look:

It's been about two years since I got my MacBook Pro, (maybe a little less), so I thought I might analyze how well the computer has done for me. Over two years I've had both enjoyments and complaints, and I have a few comparisons to make as well between this laptop and the alternatives.

Here's a map I created to display the answers to a simple question: What is the percentage of indigenous people who live in each territory, province and state of Canada and the United States? I had to get the statistics from kind of an amalgam of websites - Wikipedia, the U.S. Census, and others - and in some cases I am not exactly sure if I used an accurate figure (particularly for Nova Scotia). Regardless, the map still shows in a highly eye-catching way the relative influence that Native Hawaiians, Native Alaskans, First Nations people and American Indians have on the culture and society of U.S. and Canadian polities.

My cousin recently suggested I should write about what I think I'll be doing at age 30. (Right now I'm 21.) Since my mom just turned 50 this year, I thought I might make a prediction for that age as well, and if I'm predicting 30 and 50, why not throw in 40 while I'm at it? I'll keep my predictions brief, and hopefully you'll find them interesting. Maybe sometime in the far off future I'll look back on this and see how well I did.

I know the blog has had a lot of maps lately, like here, here and here, but I think this will be my last one for a while. I actually made this map several months ago but never put it on the blog until now, after doing a great deal of aesthetic work on it recently. The map is pretty simple: it shows whether the governor or premier of each state, province and territory in the U.S. and Canada is a man or a woman. Let's take a look!

I haven't written for my "Maps That Infuriate Me" series in quite a while, but now I think it's time to return to it. The following maps attempt to show Israel's walls constructed in the West Bank, the primary territory of the state of Palestine. Palestine's other territory - the Gaza Strip - is entirely encircled, but what's different about the walls in Palestine is how they encroach on, divide, and even completely surround Palestinian communities and land, disrupting vital connections between Palestinians and worsening their living conditions. This grossly violates the border known as the "Green Line," product of the1949 Armistice Agreementsmade between Israel and four of its opponents during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. It also violates the sovereignty and security of life and property the Palestinian people deserve, and that's why these maps infuriate me.

After my last post, I decided to do a bit more cartography on flag colors. This time, though, I've decided to include Canada, and I'm taking a new tack: showing every color in the flags, rather than the dominant color. To do that, I've made a separate map for each shade, highlighting all the states, provinces and territories whose flags that have any of that color. For this map series I've done blue, red, yellow and white. Let's take a look!

In celebration of Independence Day, I thought I might post a new map I've made that shows the main color used for each of the fifty states' flags. Hopefully it's a unique way to look at state flags that you've never seen before!

These days, a lot of things are described as "epic." I, however, would like to rehabilitate the more original, literary meaning of the word, describing stories of massive scope and ambition. I'll talk about some of my favorite epic books, and then I'll ask the question of how we can make comparisons between these stories, i.e. what makes one story more epic than another. Is it the breadth and depth of the universe it creates? Is it the astonishment and awe that the feats and actions of its heroes inspire in us? Is it the beauty the story holds in its tapestry of interwoven characters and fates? Let's explore the essence of epicness.